No abstract

The observed volumes obtained by several volume calculation methods for the butt log volume of Calibrain pine (Pinus brutia Ten.). These butt logs were compared with true volume of each butt log which was determined by aggregating the volumes of measured short (1m) using Smalian's formula. 150 of sample trees were measured into Zaweta and Atrush districts of Dohuk province. The sample trees presented diameter at breast height from 13.9 to 37.6 cm. and total height from 8-19.2 meter. The volume of each butt log was estimated by using (Smalian's, Huber's, Newton's, Hossfeld's, Bruce's, Sorenson's and Centroid method). The accuracy of these seven procedures was analyzed considering volume of butt log lengths 6-m. The results showed that Centroid method was superior for all volumes. As expected, Sorenson formula was the procedure with the worst performance.

This study was initiated with the main objective of evaluating the prediction power of previously 24 published models in the literature, developed for estimating the merchantable volume of natural stands of Pinus brutia Ten. The estimation was based on measuring the breast diameter (D), tree height (h), and absolute form quotient (F) of 120 pine trees (Pinus brutia Ten.) from 2 natural stands situated to the east of Duhok governorate. Six indicators of Fit test statistics, namely Adjusted coefficient of determination (R2- adj.) standard error of estimate (SEE), mean absolute error (MAE), Durbin-Watson statistic (D-W), p-value, and mean biased error (Bias) were used to test the performance of the applied models. The result from the centroid model was considered a reference method for the evaluation during this study. The results indicated that the square root –y logarithmic-x offered the highest performance followed by the double square root model.  The square root –y logarithmic-x (equation 11) attributed more than 90% of the variation in merchantable volume to variations in D, h, and F. Furthermore, the mean absolute error of prediction of this model was 0.0434. According to this study, the mean stem form of Pinus brutia trees is (0.64), which signifies quadratic paraboloid.